Ruth F. Weiss was the last European eyewitness of the Chinese Communist Revolution.

August 19, 1895

Birth of Vera Weisbord, Radical

In response to the police crackdown on Occupy protests across the country, thousands of people assembled with renewed energy at Occupy Wall Street on November 17th, dubbed the Occupy Wall Street Day of Action. While most protesters understand there is a chance they might be arrested, one protester was actively trying to make that happen. Frances Goldin, 87, has been arrested nine times for civil disobedience; her goal is to make it 12.

When Clara Lemlich was growing up in the Ukraine, her religious parents did not want their daughter learning Russian, the language of an antisemitic empire. But the strong minded girl was drawn to Russia’s literary masters—Tolstoy, Gorky, and Turgenev—and to the revolutionary literature being written in Russian. She took on odd jobs—sewing buttons, teaching folk songs, writing letters for illiterate women—to pay for Russian lessons and later for books she kept hidden from her family.

Sophie Gerson was a legendary figure in the history of textile union organizing in the South and a lifelong fighter for peace, justice and socialism.

My grandmother, Dorothy Ray Healey, didn't listen to you with her ears. Now, that's not a joke about her becoming hard of hearing as she grew older. She listened with her eyes. Her eyes took the measure of you as you spoke, and you knew it.

On April 5, 1905, J.Graham Phelps Stokes —Yale graduate, businessman, scion of one of New York’s “Four Hundred” families, social worker at the University Settlement on the Lower East Side, dabbler in progressive politics — announced his engagement to Rose Pastor — Russian Jewish immigrant, cigarmaker-turned-journalist, self-identified girl of the Jewish ghetto.